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George Clooney and Josh Brolin to Star in the Coen Brothers’ Next Film, a 1950s Hollywood Comedy

George Clooney has agreed to star in not one but two hotly-anticipated projects, it seems. In addition to his wedding to Amal Alamuddin, which will reportedly take place in Italy this September, the actor will headline the Coen brothers’ next film, a comedy called Hail, Caesar! that is set in 1950s Hollywood. Deadline first reported details of the project, which will center on an old-school Hollywood fixer named Eddie Mannix who works with several movie studios to protect the reputations of their film stars. Universal Pictures, which will distribute the film, announced today that Josh Brolin will also be reuniting with the No Country for Old Men filmmakers for the project.

For those interested in old Hollywood lore, Deadline has speculated about the possible inspiration for the film’s Eddie Mannix character.

[T]he comical yarn centers on a man named Eddie Mannix who sounds a
lot like the Fred Otash of his day—the famed 1950s private
investigator who worked for Confidential magazine and was the
muckraker of the time using wiretaps to spy on movie stars and gather
dirt. Otash was a former lifeguard who became a cop, lost his job as a
cop and became a private eye who wiretapped. The project is being put
together now. It’s not clear if the Eddie Mannix in the script is
based on the man of the same who was a MGM vp, for those of you
wondering. The real Mannix was vp and general manager under Louis B.
Mayer and Dore Schary. It was Mannix’s wife who actor George Reeves
had the affair with. Reeves was later found with a gunshot wound to
the head and it was ruled a suicide by the L.A. County coroner’s
office but questions have always persisted about the death.

Hail, Caesar!—the fourth collaboration between the Coen brothers and Clooney—does not yet have a release date.